


A Matter of Routine

by orphan_account



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Humor, M/M, Miscommunication, Pre-1981, post—hogwarts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-13
Updated: 2013-04-13
Packaged: 2017-12-08 09:00:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/759551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Remus looks at him as if he's expecting something important.</p><p>Foolish boy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Matter of Routine

Friday evenings usually go something like this:

Peter is not there because Peter—who is not rich, like James; or disowned, like Sirius; or acutely aware of the burden he puts on his parents merely by existing, like Remus—still lives with his mother. Mrs. Pettigrew has designated Fridays as a day for Family Activities to ensure that Peter and his horde of siblings are not—Sirius doesn't even know. Not getting pissed or seeing anyone naked, he supposes. As if they hadn't ever been to school.

If it were Sirius, he would just say no, or else go mad after five minutes of Family Activities and hex everyone in sight, but Peter has never said no to anything. That's why they like him.

James, meanwhile, spends half an hour in the bathroom with his tongue between his teeth, first trying to make his hair less of a disaster and then dousing himself in incrementally larger amounts of cologne until Sirius sees fit to intervene.

"Getting some tonight, Prongs?" Sirius asks. He leans against the door and does his best to look disinterested and unhelpful, like his sole purpose is to tease instead of to save James from himself.

"That's really none of your business, Padfoot," James says in his stupid new smug, adult voice. "Maybe I'm working on something important for Dumbledore, and you're not invited."

"Maybe you're a cock."

"At least I'm a cock who's getting some tonight," James says, dropping the pretense of maturity in favor of a lewd grin, "while you and Moony eat carry-out and stare at the walls."

He looks at himself in the mirror and reaches for the cologne again, but Sirius moves faster and grabs him by the wrist. "You're not getting anything from anyone if you use another drop."

"But," James says.

Sirius takes James by the shoulders and marches him toward the front door. "No buts. Get out of here."

"But my— _Sirius_ , I need my—"

"Out!"

After a minor tussle, Sirius manages to open the front door, shove him through it, and lock the deadbolt behind him. Sirius dusts his hands off on his jeans and stretches his neck until it cracks.

"I think he left his wand in the bathroom," Remus says, head sticking out through the door to his room, which he has to himself until they manage to kidnap Peter permanently.

"Did he?" Sirius asks, and wanders over to the bathroom to check. "Ah. He might have said."

Sirius wipes specks of toothpaste off of the wand with a washcloth and crosses to the window, where James is already looking up at the window from a spot of street-light and bellowing: "SIRIUS BLACK. I COULD BE KILLED." 

He looks deranged. It's a huge improvement, Sirius thinks, over all of that slick-combed hair and responsibility.

Sirius chucks the wand at him and slams the window shut again. "The neighbors will hate us," he drawls, delighted.

" _Will_?" asks Remus, who is right there when Sirius turns around, in his pajama bottoms and with his eyes crinkled at the corners in the way that means he's been holding in a laugh for a while and has finally managed to press it into a quiet, safe corner of his belly.

Sirius smiles.

Remus smiles back.

When that's gone on for a bit too long, Remus sniffles quietly and raises his eyebrow. "So," he says. "Indian?"

"Only if you're getting it," Sirius says.

Remus gestures to his bare chest and general state of undress, which is an invitation to check him out if Sirius ever saw one. It's nothing Sirius hasn't seen before—much less than he's seen before, honestly—but in the bright, stark light of the flat, with a whole evening of privacy laid out ahead of them, it looks somehow very different.

"I'll see if we have anything edible in the kitchen," Remus says.

"Wait," Sirius says, catching him by the shoulder before he can get away.

Remus looks at him as if he's expecting something important.

Foolish boy.

Sirius pokes a finger into his belly, which is lovely but no place to hide a laugh, and proceeds to back him into the wall and reduce him to a writhing, laughing mass of freckles.

After a while the raspberries turn into kisses, the tickling into caresses, and then he and Remus go into Remus's room and have the most fantastic, uninhibited, not-jammed-in-a-cupboard sex of Sirius's life to date.

That's what had happened  _last_  Friday, at least. And although it was, admittedly, the first Friday they spent in the flat, with all of the boxes containing anything less vital than toilet paper and tea cups still stacked precariously in every room, Sirius sees no reason why it shouldn't become routine.

* * *

The sex thing is hardly new. They did it all the time in school.

Or: all the time during seventh year, after Remus gently dumped his girlfriend to "focus on his exams," which Sirius understood to be a flimsy cover for his desire for Sirius to drag him into a cupboard and relieve him of his trousers. So Sirius did just that.

Afterwards Remus said, "Oh," and kept his face hidden against Sirius's shoulder for a long time. "That was. We should."

"I'll see you at dinner," Sirius said graciously, because Remus obviously needed time to collect the scattered pieces of his brain. He left him in the cupboard.

After  _that_ , though—and after Remus had stopped fleeing the room every time they were alone and let Sirius kiss him again—then they did it twice more. Three times constitutes a precedent, Sirius is sure. Four times, if you count last week, and Sirius most certainly  _does_.

So Remus, who knows as well as Sirius that Fridays are the only nights they'll ever be rid of both James and Peter, has  _no excuse_  for not being naked and in bed right now, let alone for not being in the flat at all.

And yet the flat is empty. 

Sirius wouldn't be so hacked off about it if he hadn't put so much effort into getting James out of the door. He'd ironed James's trousers and helped him with his tie and, with great effort and finesse, convinced him that Lily's parents would find him charming and there was no need to hyperventilate. And then Sirius had shaved and put on clean clothes of his own. 

All he has to show for it now is slight razor burn, a cold cup of tea, and an ash tray full of cigarette butts.

The clock's hands creep toward midnight. Sirius has just begun to worry that Remus is dead, and then wouldn't he feel like a bastard for having spent the last four hours sulking, when Remus apparates into the living roomand immediately falls flat over, stiff as a board, face frozen in an expression that is more resigned than surprised.

The wards don't like Remus—either for being a dark creature or for cursing extensively and creatively while he and James tried to get them to work properly. Perhaps both. At least they don't make him bleed anymore.

A quick survey ensures that all of Remus's pieces are present and in the right places and he hasn't been turned into an inferi. So Sirius's sulking was entirely justified. He takes his time wandering over to help.

"A lesser person would take advantage," he points out.  _"Finite Incantatem_."

"You were going to fix that," Remus says once he's regained control of his mouth.

"I am," Sirius says. "As soon as it stops being funny. You could use your key in the meantime."

Remus huffs and looks around the room. He takes a long breath and his nostrils flare. "You're not supposed to smoke in here."

"Landlord will never know."

"But  _I_  know," Remus says. His chin juts out.

Sirius raises his eyebrows. "And what are you going to do about it?" he asks.

In an ideal world, Remus would take that as a proposition, not as an effort to put him in his place. But Sirius should have known better. Instead of shoving Sirius against the wall and teaching him a lesson, Remus shrugs glumly. "Go to bed," he says.

Sirius can't decide which is more annoying: Remus's lack of perception or Remus's lack of spine. "You do that," he says, and collapses back onto the couch to smoke another cigarette.

He pretends not to pay any attention as Remus wanders slowly to his door and refuses to let any hope show on his face when Remus stops and turns around to look at him, searching. "Are you angry?"

"Why," Sirius asks with as much disdain as he can muster, which is a terrible lot, "would I be angry?"

Remus hovers in his doorway a few seconds longer. "I was with Caradoc," he says finally. "I had to help Dorcas take him to St. Mungo's. They." He stops, swallows, and stares.

All of the worries and questions and  _what if it had been Moony_  struggle for release at once. Sirius quiets them by sitting up straight and asking, with what he feels is a great amount of empathy and maturity, "Do you want to talk about it?"

"No," Remus says sharply. "I don't."

He shuts the door too quietly, like he has to be careful to keep himself from slamming it, and it's not until the following Monday that Sirius realizes Remus probably wanted Sirius to follow him and take his mind off things. But by then Caradoc is walking around again, all smiles, so it's too late. 

He wishes Remus had just said something.

* * *

The following Friday, it's half Sirius's fault. He's the one who can't think of an excuse when James invites them to come along for drinks with Lily and Marlene and the Prewett brothers. But the situation would not have been  _completely_  hopeless if not for Remus.

Sirius does a flawless acting job. He doesn't even look up from his mug when Remus leaves the table, and after Remus has been gone long enough he excuses himself to smoke and apparates into the bathroom from outside. Pure genius.

Perfect timing, too. Remus is washing his hands. He smiles at him through the mirror. "Hello, Padfoot."

"Hey," Sirius answers. He sidles up behind Remus and slides his hands down into the front of his trousers. They won't go far, with the button and zip still fastened, but it's enough for Sirius to cup the curves of his hip bones. "Ever fucked in a toilet stall?"

"No," Remus says calmly, "and I don't intend to start."

"Moony," Sirius begins.

Remus twists around before he can continue, though, dislodging his hands in the process. When Sirius leans in to kiss him, he turns his face away, but he does nothing to stop Sirius from unfastening his trousers. "What are we doing, Sirius?" he asks.

"Fucking in a toilet stall."

"That's not what I mean," Remus says, but Sirius gets a hand into his pants for real, this time, and he seems to lose interest in that thread of conversation. He grips Sirius's shoulders and makes a wonderful, breathy noise instead. "Anyone could walk in," he says.

Sirius opens his mouth to argue.

James walks in.

"Fucking hell," Remus says to Sirius, shoving his hands away.

"Oi," James says to no one in particular.

It occurs to Sirius that the time to tell Remus that James was not a raging homophobe—that he has, in fact, known about Sirius for years, and Sirius has already knocked all the bad jokes clean out of him—might have been sometime before now. But that doesn't give Remus the right to zip up and storm out without another word.

"Potter," Sirius says to James. "What do you want?"

"To piss," James says. "Something going on with you and Remus?"

"Not today."

"Should I be defending someone's honor?"

The most withering look in the world still would not be an appropriate answer to that, but Sirius does try.

* * *

He doesn't get his hopes up the next Friday. Even if Remus weren't sore and bandaged, with a belly full of pain- and mind-numbing potions, Sirius himself would be too exhausted to try anything on him. He sits beside Remus's bed, instead, and uses a charm to stitch together a jumper that Moony got his teeth into.

Remus lies on his side and watches the needle move up and down, closing the hole. Sirius wonders if it could put him to sleep. He hopes so. Pain turns Remus into a petulant toddler. Bless Madame Pomfrey for liking him anyway. If this was the only state Sirius ever saw him in, he probably would have thrown him out the window, after a few years.

"The thread is orange," Remus points out, frowning.

"Yes," Sirius agrees.

"The jumper is green."

"Indeed." Sirius can see where this is going.

"It doesn't match."

"Don't be a girl."

Remus is quiet for a moment before he says, gravely, "I'm not gay, you know."

Sirius scoffs. "Of course you are."

"I'm not. I like girls."

"You like  _literature_."

"Yes," Remus says, eyebrows knit together. It's kind of cute. It mostly makes Sirius want to punch him. "And girls."

"You're daft."

" _You're_  daft."

"You're plastered."

" _You're_ —"

"Another word and I'll sew your mouth shut."

Remus huffs and rolls over.

Sirius finishes his jumper before the quiet starts to get to him and he casts a glance at Remus's back. "Don't sulk, Moony. You're not any good at it." A lie.

Remus's only answer is a nasal snuffling noise that sounds too little like a snore to be faked. (After years and years of finding excuses to ignore his parents, Sirius knows these things.) Sirius puts the clothing aside and crawls over the edge of the bed to look at him, just to make sure.

Remus is sound asleep, with his mouth hanging open in a way that should be much more unattractive than it is. 

Sirius sighs and stretches out alongside him. For a while he props his head up with one arm and scrutinizes the bones that poke out when Remus inhales and the hollows that grow more defined when he exhales. Eventually his arm gets sore and he lies down, splays a hand over Remus's hip, presses his nose up against the back of Remus's neck, and falls asleep. 

* * *

The next week, Sirius doesn't even try. Not much, anyway. He showers but doesn't shave, lets James put on all the cologne he wants without interruption, and settles into the armchair with the  _Daily Prophet_  afterwards rather than joining Remus and his book on the couch. 

Let him read. Let him like girls. Sirius doesn't care. He is a perfectly attractive young wizard with a motorbike, a leather jacket, and a horrible reputation. If he's going to go a fourth week without getting laid, it's going to be because he didn't  _try_ , thank you.

Sirius glances over the top of the paper and finds Remus staring at him, book tented on his chest. He raises an eyebrow. Remus raises one back.

"I fixed the wards," Sirius says.

"I noticed."

"You're welcome."

"Thank you."

Sirius looks back at the paper, the swimming lines of numbers. "This is stupid."

"Agreed."

"There should at least be some sort of coherent system."

"What?"

"I think they mean to print them by region, but their regions don't make sense. What's wrong with alphabetical order?"

Remus puts his book on the floor and sits up. "What are you talking about?"

"Quidditch scores," Sirius says, rustling the paper illustratively. "What are  _you_  talking about?"

Remus makes a choked-off noise. Sirius can hear the temper tantrum stoppered just behind his sharp, crooked teeth, and for a moment Sirius is proud of having caused it. Then Remus ruins it by standing up and sounding more miserable than furious. "I'm going to bed," he mumbles.

Sirius lets him take a few steps before he jumps out of his chair. "Wait, wait," he says, positioning himself between Remus and the door. "Let's talk."

The look Remus gives him is one more usually reserved for when Sirius says things like  _Close your eyes and hold out your hand_. "You want to?"

"No." Sirius slouches back against the door and crosses his arm, just to emphasize that Remus is not getting to it without going through him. "But we should."

"Because," Remus says carefully, "this is the sort of thing that needs discussion?"

"Yes," Sirius grates out.

Remus cants his head. "Serious discussion?"

And that's  _it_. Sirius snaps. "If you  _honestly_  think it's only all right for me to kiss you when we're locked in your room _—_ "

"We were in a  _public bathroom_!"

"—or that you're—Merlin's balls, do you listen to yourself talk? If you still say that you're straight or if you're honestly going to bed  _without_ me, then yes, I'd say we have a  _fucking lot to seriously discuss_."

Remus looks down at his shoes, head bent so his eyes are hidden behind his shaggy mess of hair. In the calm stretch of silence, Sirius wonders if he's ruined everything; then, "I see," Remus says, and he is sickeningly certain that he has.

Talking was a bad idea. Maybe Remus really is straight and all of this time he has just been too polite  _not_  to lie there moaning Sirius's name and suffering from orgasms. It's the sort of thing Remus would do. Sometimes Sirius suspects that if he told Remus that killing him was vital to Sirius's happiness, Remus would purse his lips and say,  _If you must_.

"You see?" Sirius prompts, trying not to sound wildly helpless.

"Mhm. And I'm glad it's settled." He raises his head to peer at Sirius through his hair, and there is badly-hidden warmth in the corner of his mouth. Sirius feels the world right itself, just as he feels Remus's long, bony fingers slip under the hem of his shirt and slide up to his waist. "You might have _asked_ me."

"Asked you?" Sirius murmurs. He leans forward until his nose is pressed against Remus's. He's fairly certain that somewhere in this mess all of the necessary apologies have been made and all of then necessary forgiveness granted—though to whom and by whom, he couldn't say—and now he'd rather just get on with it.

When Remus smiles he can feel it against his cheek. "If you could be my girlfriend."

The sing-song lilt to his voice makes it obvious he's teasing, but Sirius jerks his head back and growls anyway. "That is  _not_  what I meant."

Remus laughs and pulls him in again with a firm hand on his back. "Close enough," he says. He reaches behind Sirius to open the door. "We can talk later."

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on LiveJournal as part of the 2008 Remus/Sirius Games.


End file.
